wealth of knowledge, worldliness and high aesthetic sensitivity. This group
includes the likes of Sofia Coppola who acts as Marc Jacob’s muse and Dita
Von Tesse who is connected with Louis Vuitton.
The final group of the faces that act as ambassadors are the models through
whom a brand’s products are displayed both on the runways and in adver-
tisements. The concept of fashion models was introduced in the nineteenth
century by La Maison Worth and since then the popularity of models has
grown. However, for a long time, models were not celebrated in the fashion
sector until the era of the Supermodels of the 1980s, mainly promoted by the
late Gianni Versace. Since then, luxury brands have promoted and even cele-
brated models such as Eva Herzigova, Cindy Crawford, Heidi Klum, Kate
Moss and more recently Gisele Bundchen and Daria Werbrow.
The challenge faced by luxury brands in managing ambassadors is to know
when the brand’s ambassador should be promoted as a personal brand and if
this is a positive factor for the luxury brand or not. For example, during Tom
Ford’s tenure as the Creative Director of Gucci, his celebrity status and
personal brand power seemed so strong and influential that the thought of
Gucci without Tom Ford and vice versa was unimaginable. On the other hand,
both Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo were highly successful as the
Creative Directors of Chloé but never quite overshadowed the brand.
It has often been argued that luxury brands should avoid celebrity or star
designers in order to contain the risk of the designer overshadowing the
brand. The proponents of this opinion believe that instead of promoting the
designers, luxury brands should channel their resources into sustaining their
brand equity. This debate could be approached from two viewpoints. The
first point of view is the definition of the strategic role of the designer. The
designer’s role for a luxury brand depends on the position of the brand when
the designer joined the company. Using Gucci as an illustration, Tom Ford
as a star designer played a key strategic role in resuscitating the prestige
brand aura of Gucci and elevating it once more to the luxury fashion brand
status after the brand depreciated for several years. In this case, the star
designer is imperative. On the other hand, Karl Lagerfeld’s role at Chanel
and Marc Jacobs’ at Louis Vuitton are more aligned towards promoting the
identities and ‘spirits’ of the brands and enhancing their value and less about
defining the brand character and strategic direction as Tom Ford did for
Gucci. Other rising designers such as Tomas Maier of Bottega Veneta who
currently plays a purely creative role might be elevated to star or celebrity
status according to the needs of the brand and the requirements of the market
environment.
To say that a brand doesn’t need a designer with celebrity status would be
wrong but the presence of a star designer should be to play a key strategic role
at the required time for the brand. This is one of the reasons for the impor-
tance of brand ambassadors.166
luxury fashion branding